Uncharted designer says he doesn’t want a remake or remaster because ‘it doesn’t make any sense’
The former Naughty Dog developer wants to see a new game set during Drake’s past
A former Naughty Dog developer who was a designer on the first three Uncharted games says he doesn’t want to see the first entry being remade or remastered.
In an interview with FRVR, Benson Russell – who was at Naughty Dog for nearly a decade and worked as a game designer on Uncharted 1-3 and The Last of Us – was asked whether he’d like to see a remake or remaster of the original Uncharted game.
Russell replied that he didn’t want to see this happening, because he doesn’t see the point in remastering a game like Uncharted, as opposed to an older game that’s less easily accessible today.
“System Shock… a remake of that now makes a lot of sense,” he explained, “because not just can you play it, but it had horrible key bindings, it kept a lot of people out of it from wanting to play it.”
“Uncharted as a thing is still in the zeitgeist,” he added. “There’s already a version you can play on modern consoles [to] get the experience. What’s the point of remastering [or remaking] it?”.
Addressing suggestions that one reason to remake the first game would be to make it a slower, more emotional game like modern Naughty Dog titles, Russell said that would change the entire point of it.
“I just don’t see the point of remaking [it],” he explained. “You’d have to rewrite the whole story to make it better which means you’re going to change the spirit and you’re going to change the scenes and what the first one was about, right?
“You’re going to have to add all these scenes or take things away and a lot of the key set pieces – are you going to keep those? Are you going to have to redo them because they don’t fit your story?”
He added: “I honestly thought the same thing about The Last of Us Part 1… these are old games for a reason.”
Instead, Russell said he would rather see Naughty Dog “take the spirit” of the series and “make a new game in an earlier time era and go back to what it was”.
The last full Uncharted game was Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, which was released in 2016. This was followed by a standalone expansion, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, in 2017. Naughty Dog remastered both games in 2022 with Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection.
The original Uncharted trilogy, which was released on PS3, was remastered in Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, which came to PS4 in 2015 and is still available on the PlayStation Store.
